Barcelona: Part One

We spent last week in Spain as part of a work trip for Darren.  He attended a tech conference in Barcelona during the week, but we also took a quick side trip to Madrid before returning home.  We didn't expect we would be able to travel to Spain while we are here in Europe, so it was a nice surprise to see something unexpected.  We arrived in Barcelona late Sunday night after a significant delay thanks to Spanair, the Spanish national airline.  We can't say we were really impressed with the airline, but I think their flights are pretty inexpensive, so you get what you pay for.

The conference Darren attended, Mobile World Congress, had around 50,000 participants, so needless to say every hotel room available in Barcelona was booked.  Since Darren wasn't assigned to go to this conference until two weeks before, we were scrambling to find somewhere to stay.  The only thing left we could find was a short-term apartment rental in the Gothic section of Barcelona.  When we arrived in Barcelona at 10:30 pm and walked to our apartment, we didn't really feel like we were in the best part of town.  We took a picture of our street during the day, when it looked less sketchy.  Really, after you got used to it, it wasn't so bad.

Our sketchy street where we stayed

This is our sketch door

Our tiny stairwell with poor lighting and red paint (??) on the steps

Now despite all the sketchiness around the apartment, the apartment itself was nice.  The pictures below are from the rental website since I was too lazy to take pictures.  While the green walls were adorable and the furnishings were great, don't be fooled by the pictures.  Every lamp you see in the pictures was not actually there.  And there were shutters on the windows that I could not open, so the apartment was very dark, which was annoying.  There were lots of other little things that were weird about the apartment, but we really just had a good laugh about all of it.  We were grateful we even were able to find somewhere to stay in the city at the last minute.  The best part of having the apartment, though, was being able to keep milk, juice, and yogurt in the fridge so we could have a quick and cheap breakfast every morning.

I loved the green walls!

Yes, there were separate beds, oh well

We didn't do anything Sunday night since it was so late, so we just unpacked and went to sleep.  Darren went to the conference the next morning and I went exploring around Barcelona.  I walked and walked and walked, but I don't have many pictures because it was raining.  I couldn't take a good picture, hold my umbrella, and keep someone from stealing my purse all at the same time (Barcelona is notorious for petty theft).  Don't worry though, I went back on other days and took pictures of the sites I saw, so I'll talk about them later.  

The highlight of my day was finding this cute eatery that only served chocolate and churros.  Dipping churros in chocolate is a big hit in Spain, so I had to try it.  The hot chocolate was a fantastic way to warm up on a cold, rainy day.

Not as good as Swiss chocolate, but it will do ;)

Around sunset, the rain and clouds cleared a bit to give a nice sunset, so I headed up to the rooftop terrace in our building.  It was a nice terrace and if it had been warm and sunny, it would have been a great place to sit and read a book.

View from the roof of our apartment building

Sunset

On the roof of our building

That night, we ate at a great tapas restaurant, Taller de Tapas, that was near our apartment.  This restaurant was always packed with people (because of the conference or just because it is highly recommended, I don't know) so it was a good thing I made a reservation.  The Spanish are notorious for eating very late and most restaurants don't even open for dinner until 8 or 9 pm!  And a lot of places are pretty empty at 8 pm.  It was actually a bit frustrating trying to figure out when restaurants were open for business since a lot of them would open and close two or three times a day.  Since it is a very popular restaurant, they luckily started serving dinner earlier than usual, so we only had to wait until 8 pm to eat.  I really enjoyed the atmosphere, the energy, and the food at this place and would recommend everyone to go here if they go to Barcelona.

Where we celebrated Valentine's Day, picture was taken the next afternoon

That was our first full day, more posts to come.